Paul Mescal plays Lucius in Gladiator II, and I guess they’re not trying to hide the big reveal about Lucius’s paternity, because it’s discussed quite openly in Mescal’s GQ interview. There was some indication of the paternity in the trailer too, but I feel like some people missed it. If you want to be surprised when you sit in the theater to watch G2, I guess you should stop reading now! Mescal is charming in this piece – they’re building him up as a man’s man, but also someone comfortable in his own skin and very in touch with his feelings and his craft. Some highlights from GQ:

He follows his own taste when it comes to choosing projects. “I weirdly enjoy the intensity of the way my brain works. That’s why I think I function better when I’m at work than when I’m between jobs. Maybe my toxic trait is, I don’t believe in work-at-home Friday….My agent refers to me openly as a psychopath when it comes to work. I feel an intense desire to have this forever”—the opportunity, the success, the artistic freedom—“I want this to never stop. So with that comes a kind of neurosis of control.”

Bros are excited for Gladiator: “The bros will come up and be like, ‘Can’t wait for Gladiator.’ No proper handshakes, lots of this handshake,” he says, pantomiming the handshake hug beloved by dudes the world over. “I’m an honorary bro now.”

He tried not to stress out about working with Denzel Washington: “The feeling is like, acting is acting is acting. I built it up in my head. I was like, ‘Okay, today’s the day that Denzel’s going to be on set.’ And I was so incapacitated by it that I suddenly was like, ‘This is so f–king stupid. I have a job to do.’ ”

Denzel Washington on Paul Mescal: He “knows what he’s doing, he knows how to do it. It’s easy to work off of him because he’s giving you something. There’s a quiet dignity and a strength and intelligence that he has, even just when he’s standing there.”

The first ‘Gladiator’ is very emotional: “It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You’re allowed to watch it and still feel very masc and macho about it. But actually the reason that film works is it’s an action drama. It’s got a real pathos to it, and all of the violence is motivated by somebody’s love and betrayal.”

College education in Ireland: Mescal compares the cost of his classical training in college—just $10,000 thanks to government funding for higher education in Ireland—to the price tag in the US. “How do you start your career, let’s say, $200,000 in debt, and expect to have any kind of artistic integrity with the choices that you make? What if somebody turns around and goes, ‘You can do this terribly written piece of work, but it’s going to pay off your college debt.’ ”

On all of the rumors about his ladies: “I’ve learned that there’s certain lines in the sand now for me that just are going to be impenetrable for the benefit of my own sanity, but also the benefit of my work. Because I think if you don’t have those boundaries up in terms of lines in the sand in regards to your private life, people know way too much about you and then they can’t invest in the imagined landscape of your character because they know what your favorite thing to eat for breakfast is. I mean, the speculation has been kind of mad for the last x amount of years. I’m not comfortable inviting any access into that part of my life. How I am in my private life is so precious to me because I get very little of it, and it might be public interest, but it’s not public-obligated information.”

The rumors that he would have one night stands and then literally run away from women: “Ohhhhhhh,” he moans, head in his hands, when I bring it up. He stays there for a while, belly laughing and turning red. “F–king hell!” Those videos first came out around the holidays when he was with his siblings. “We were looking at the videos and we were pissing ourselves at it. Categorically untrue. And we were laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing. And the one thing that upset me was that I was in the kitchen, I remember my mum looking at the videos and she was getting upset. Isn’t that devastating? I was like, Oh, it’s funny to us—my brother, me, my sister—because we know that this is the way the internet works. It’s hilarious. If it was true, it’d be f–king bad, but as a rumor, it’s funny. Then I was like, Oh, if you’re a mother, her impulse is to come out and be like, ‘He wouldn’t do this.’ ”

He is convinced that he will not have a long life: “I’ve always been convinced that I’m not going to live a long life… People have this response, but in my head it’s never been drastic. It’s just like a gut feeling. And maybe it’s to do with the fact that I can’t visualize myself as an 80-year-old man. But I’m also afraid of death. So I think if death was to come for me at 55, I’d be equally afraid of it as I would be at 90…. It’s always in my head. I was like, Going to have a family young. I’m going to not survive a long time. Hopefully, I’m wrong. I think I will be wrong. But that’s just the truth around my brain.”

[From GQ]

This is the first time I’ve heard Mescal address those TikToks about how he had one night stands and then literally runs away from the women. Laughing it off is the answer, but I have to say… I sort of halfway believe that he’s done that to a couple of women. The stuff about feeling like he won’t have a long life… some people do have that sense and they turn out to be wrong, and then for other people, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, if that makes sense. And does he honestly think Americans leave college with only $200K in debt? Oh, you sweet summer child.

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Photo & cover courtesy of GQ.